by T Marie Allman

Created on: May 14, 2009

Social structure in the Middle Ages was complex and in constant flux. One simple constant was the distinction between the nobility and those of common birth. The largest social class of commoners was by far the peasant class, the lowest level of medieval social strata. As such, peasants provided the hard labor necessary for survival during a time when most people could barely eke out a subsistence living. The life of a peasant during the Middle Ages was laborious and precarious, yet was also filled with times of celebration and revelry.

The majority of medieval peasantry worked on land, practicing farming or animal husbandry. They also comprised the workforce that supported land-owning lords and their households. Peasants worked as millers, tanners, dyers, blacksmiths, carpenters, wheelwrights and weavers. A manor had to supply most of its own goods for subsistence and to sell for profit. The landlord usually owned the land on which the peasants farmed or grazed their animals. Peasants working land owned by the manor were known as villeins or serfs. By definition, a serf was a person who owed his or her landlord rent and week-work, or a given amount of work during a week's time. The rent was payable in goods, usually annually, in the form of animals, grain, ale, honey or other necessities. The week-work could be plowing the manor's own fields, gathering fruit, making ale, or repairing buildings, anything the serf was directed to do by the landlord's steward. Work done for the manor house kept the serf away from his own labors, which were necessary to provide for his family. Serfs rarely went to do their week-work with as much enthusiasm as they went to tend to their own. Women worked hard alongside the men, sometimes helping in the fields, but most often at home. Women tended the children, the family's animals, cooked, washed, spun, wove, dyed and sewed clothing. When rents were due, it was common for a household to supply articles of clothing made by the women of the house.

A peasant's home was often a makeshift structure designed to last less than a generation. It was common for an inheriting heir to be required to build a new house simply because the old one was uninhabitable. The house of a lowly peasant would consist of only two rooms: a main hall with a central fire pit or fireplace along one wall and a second room for storage and for the family's animals. No doors graced the walls, so the family often shared space with their

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